Fox Media Player Sucks

I’m a fan of the Fox TV show House. When my TiVo failed to record a critical show last spring, I went to the Fox web site to see if I could watch it online.

My experience with viewing streamed video from other networks (such as CBS) is that this technology simply does not work. For some reason if one is connected to the Internet over a satellite connection (which has high latency), most of the video streamers roll over and die.

Fox decided that they would not use any of the existing streaming technologies (Windows Media Player, QuickTime, Flash, Real, etc) and rolled their own. With much fanfare. They explained that they were doing this because the other technologies were inadequate.

Here are screen shots of their amazing new streaming technology. Perhaps they should have tested it before releasing it. And, no, their support people were not helpful at all.

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This entry was posted on November 9, 2008 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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12 Responses to “Fox Media Player Sucks”

Dude! I couldn’t disagree more. Granted, I had some problems installing it. If you follow their instructions it doesn’t seem to install properly. I used “Save” instead of “Run”, then ran the exe that was downloaded. This didn’t work so I shut the browser down and then started it up again and this time followed their installation instructions and then it magically worked.

I have a dell Inspiron E1705 widescreen laptop. Last night I watched 4 full episodes on it connected to a hotel wireless at 54 Mbps (G). When you click full screen the quality is absolutely amazing. Seriously now, I can’t tell the difference between playing a DVD on the laptop and playing it streaming off the site. Believe me, I am not exaggerating. My job centers around image quality and I am very familiar with all the usual streaming protocols like flash video.

When the network gets slow, it appears that the server serves up a lower res version of the movie to avoid skipping. I do notice a degradation in quality during these times. The degraded movie looks like a you tube video, pehaps they are combining protocols?

Anyway, I am amazed, hats off to fox. I would love to know how they did this! My advice – try it again. If they can fix the install problems then I think people will be blown away by this technology.

Just loaded Fox Media Player so I could watch 24. The quality is so bad at 8pm in the evening. Lots of contouring indicate that the video is way over compressed, painful to watch. I routinely watch ‘The Office’ on NBC web site and it is many times better than this Fox crap. (My machine is a quad core, wired at 100Mbps, and can easily handle bluray.)

When I try and watch Fringe the video goes into a loop and gives me the blue screen on my computer. I have also found all video’s to have loading issues. Other sites such as ABC and NBC do not have these issues.

Experiencing the same issues with MoveMedia on Fox.com! Commercial plays but freezes when show (24, Hells Kitchen, Fringe) starts. I tried installing, un-installing everything! PC is powerful enough, connection is more than adequate.

Dudes! I found the quality to be excellent! In fact, I was considering ditching my cable TV to save money, but the media players were so bad I knew I would be dissappointed. Watching 24 on Fox was great. I would drop cable TV altogether or least go with basic cable if I could this quality video on a regular basis. FYI, I have Comcast.

Lispman and Chris must be plants. Seriously. “I’m going to ditch my cable”. That is laughable. After viewing one video? Are you going to ditch your laptop after view a bluray? If you guys are not advertising plants I will quit my job as a lie detector. What could Fox be doing that hasn’t been thought of or patented? Nothing except making it impossible for you to view their videos without them tracking your habits and spying on your computer. Plllllzzzzzzzzzz. I got scrubland in New Mexico that has water….really….lots of water.

I tired several times in firefox with no luck. I just installed it in internet explorer (saved and then ran the installation) the media player works, but only in internet explorer not firefox, not sure why…but if you can’t get firefox to install try IE, i had to ignore the threats from my anti spyware program…kept warning me about cookies when ever I open a video **I installed it from FOX.com and tried ABC.com but it say’s I need to install it again to watch the ABC shows… it will probably work once I install on both sites (but I’m pretty sure if it’s the same player installation it shouldn’t be necessary) Honestly these sites should care bc they’re losing business I tried downloading this player a few months ago and usually watch them on hulu or somewhere else bc I couldn’t get the installation- I’m only watching on the site now bc 2 shows I watch are probably getting canceled and I’m hoping that by using the Fox media player the Fox will see that there is a large internet audience

I can attest to great online video experience from the Fox site. I have a Mac Book Pro 17” and about 6 months ago my rear projection TV crapped out.

Rather than go out and buy a new TV, I hooked up my lap top to my 30″ flat panel display and set both on my coffee table. Now I don’t need a regular TV.

Watching 24, Lie to Me, and House on the computer is great. I have Comcast’s high-speed internet but I will have not and will not renew the cable portion of the package. My wife is happy because the once $100+ cable bill is not cut in half. We ended up subscribing to Netflix, but will soon cancel, because the movie rental experience with iTunes is second to none. The only thing that I’m missing is watching sports on TV, but hell, I’ll go out to a bar with a buddy for that. (Go Hawks!!!)

The quality with Fox, Hulu and ABC media players is so awesome that we’ll never go back to cable. F-Cable.

Can I simply say what a relief to find someone that actually knows what they’re talking about over the internet. You actually understand how to bring a problem to light and make it important. A lot more people have to look at this and understand this side of the story. It’s surprising you aren’t more popular since you definitely have the gift.